Google could pay $9 billion to Apple to ensure it stays as the default search engine in Safari on iOS

The report also indicated that the payment amount that Google makes to Apple for the agreement is likely to jump to $12 billion in 2019.

A new report has surfaced on the internet indicating that search and software giant Google may pay about $9 billion to Apple to ensure that Google Search will stay as the default search engine on Safari. You may think that it is an astronomical amount just to be a search engine. But to clarify, Safari is the in-house browser from Apple that comes pre-installed on all iOS-powered devices. Considering that there were about 700 million iPhone devices in the market back in March 2017, with $9 billion amount, the company seems to be paying about $12.85 per iPhone user for the number of devices almost 1.5 years back.

The $12.85 per iPhone user figure was reported by Fast Company where the publication noted that the actual amount per iOS-powered device would be less if we take into account the number of devices that Apple has launched since March 2017. All this considering Apple recently announced that about 2 billion iOS-powered devices are currently out in the market. The 2 billion number includes both the iPhone as well as iPad devices in the market. This would mean that it would be considerably cheaper for Google to rope in new users for its service ecosystem as most users don’t end up changing the default search engine on their browser.

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The $9 billion figure first appeared on a report by analyst Rod Hall on Business Insider. According to a report by 9to5Mac, this is not the first time and it is likely that Google regularly pays Apple for this agreement but none of the two reveals any information on the details about the deal.

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The report also indicated that the figure is likely to jump to $12 billion in 2019. This is interesting since Apple also uses Bing, the search engine by Microsoft that is a direct competitor to Google Search at a number of places.